Annie Smith

It was the biggest group we’ve had in some time in Birmingham, as 8 of us met up in St. Paul’s Square. Arron was joining in for the first time and introduced himself. While Adam was taking part having done his first task last month. After waiting for Annie, who happened to be just around the corner of the church, a few yards away from us, we hoped for better luck finding Beth from the Canal and River Trust at Barker Bridge. Amy caught us up along the canal and we got there just as Beth arrived. She told us about the plans to improve the area with other groups taking on sections of our traditional adopted area of the canal, and challenged us to take on extra responsibilities for clearing out the overgrown weeds, bushes and planting wild and aesthetic flowers. When she had finished, we picked along our new section, with Amy heading off with a group towards Brindley Place. I joined Ben and Balal picking towards Barker Bridge before meeting back up with Annie, Liam and the others back towards the jewellery quarter. Even on a short litter pick, we were able to fill 6 bags to clean the canal.

Six of us met at Golden Square in the Jewellery Quarter for the last of three litter picks in a week in the area. As we assembled we were joined (or was it crashed) by Abbie and Katie, who had seen the original flyer for the JQBID litter pick and had committed so much to the idea that they decided to head out and see if they could join in or make it happen even though the original event had been cancelled. Well, that’s exactly the kind of people we like at GoodGym so we made sure they didn’t have time to change their minds and set them up with bag and litter pick. But that wasn’t the half of it as Amy had brought along the delightful Luna, who she was dog sitting, to help us sniff out the dumping grounds. So with seven Goodgymers and a dog in tow, we set off down Vyse Street, which was refreshingly clear, and turned into some equally clean back streets. After a calm start, we began to find where the strong winds had taken the discarded rubbish, and Jonny had some bag troubles as the wind caught his light pickings and threw them all out of his bag onto the road. Not the most auspicious start, but we began to find some bottles and cans to weigh the bags down, and some nice new small cafes and restaurants to try along the way. We began to form two groups to get as many roads as possible cleared. I joined Balal and Liam, who had come out on his lunch break while working from home. We met up with the others, who also had Annie in the group, as we had all looped back to Golden Square. From there we took two different directions up to Camden Street, which is a notoriously litter strewn road in the area. Our group passed 1000 Trades on the way, to make it feel as though we were on a good old Group Run, before we all met up again by The Pig and Tail, where we dropped off 6 bags full to the brim at our drop off point. Welcome to GoodGym both of our new members, we hope you enjoyed it and that we see you for many more tasks. Later on, we found out that Luna had crashed out completely after the walk around the JQ, keeping an eye on us all had taken its toll. I wonder if it was the same for our task crashers and the others, it certainly was for me as I took a well needed rest later on.